$1 million gold bathtub stolen from Japanese hotel

Wednesday

May 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2007 at 9:42 AM

A glittering bathtub made of gold worth nearly $1 million has been stolen from a resort hotel, an official said today.

A worker at Kominato Hotel Mikazuki in Kamogawa, south of Tokyo, notified police that the fancy tub was missing from the hotel's guest bathroom on the 10th floor, according to a local police official who only gave his surname, Ogawa.

The round tub is made of 18-karat gold and weighs 176 pounds.

Flanked by two crane statues, the tub has been a main feature of the hotel's shared bathroom. Visitors can take a dip in the tub, but it is only available a few hours a day "for security reasons," the hotel's Web site said.

Someone apparently cut the chain attached to the door of a small section of the bathroom where the bathtub was placed, but not riveted, and made off with the tub, Ogawa said.

"We have no witness information and there are no video cameras," he said. "We have no idea who took it," the official said.